Calla Mcleod

The People in the Game

A second-year player keeps a championship ambition grounded in the team around her.

Calla McLeod first played basketball at five, encouraged by her parents and brother. By her first club game in Grade 6, she knew she wanted to take the sport seriously.

What she valued about it became clearer when she couldn’t be with her team.

COVID moved everything online and took away the shared practices she loved. Basketball, a game built on people responding to one another, had become something she was trying to maintain at a distance.

The disruption remains one of her toughest challenges. It also belongs to the experiences that helped her understand what success in the sport involves.

Practices had given the game a shared rhythm. Going online kept some form of activity available, but could not reproduce the feeling of being together in the gym. The absence helped clarify what Calla valued about playing: other people to work with, respond to, and support.

That perspective gives her championship goal a context. A team can work toward winning because it values the people involved. Calla wants the result, but she also wants the connections that make the pursuit feel worth the effort. She has experienced the difference when those connections are suddenly harder to reach.

Scoring and playing well matter. So do leadership and supporting teammates when your own game isn’t supplying the highlight.

Now entering her second year of eligibility with the Lightning, Calla wants to help St. Mary’s win a championship. She also wants meaningful relationships along the way, because those are part of why she keeps playing.

Teammates, friends, and family help her move through difficult days. Being part of a school community gives the individual work somewhere to belong.

Her advice is practical and generous.

“You don’t have to be the best to be successful. You just have to be willing to work hard.”

It leaves room for growth without pretending effort is optional. A player can start where she is and still make herself useful.

Her lesson about scoring follows the same logic. A good individual game can help the team; so can leadership and consistent support when the personal numbers are less satisfying. Calla wants to stay engaged in both situations. There is still a teammate to encourage and a contribution to find.

“Success to me is not just winning but also creating meaningful relationships along the way,” she says.

It is a definition that requires attention to the season while it is happening. Relationships are built through the ordinary days, not awarded alongside a championship at the end. The work she hopes people remember includes how she treated them during the pursuit.

That is how Calla wants to be remembered: someone who tried her hardest and did everything she could to help the team win.

Looking beyond the box score has become part of how Calla approaches the game. The championship goal is there, but so is the awareness that a team’s best memories often include more people than the scoring leaders.

Calla wants to keep giving those people a reason to count on her.